Affiliations: [a] Ciències de la Computació, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Espanya | [b] Ciencias de la Computación, Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas A.C., Guanajuato, México | [c] Matemáticas Básicas, Centro de Investigación en Matemáticas A.C., Guanajuato, Mexico | [d] Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México | [e] Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de México, México
Note: [**] Instituto de Matemáticas (Unidad Cuernavaca), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cuernavaca, Morelos, México
Abstract: The game of Scrabble has been successfully tackled by two engines: Quackle and Maven. They attain the state-of-the-art in Computer Scrabble. These engines use simulation techniques and precalculated values to achieve superhuman play. This paper presents a Scrabble-playing engine, Heuri, which achieves world championship standards when playing in Spanish, and a very high level when playing in English and French, without using brute-force approaches.One advantage of Heuri is that its calculations, as opposed to many in Quackle, are not precomputed and instead performed for every turn. Spanish match results of different versions of Heuri against humans and two versions of Quackle are presented in this paper. Results against Quackle, in English and French, are also given. The main goal of this paper is to enrich Computer Scrabble with the description of a Scrabble playing program, Heuri, which is differently designed from earlier ones such as Maven and Quackle. An additional goal is to give Scrabble players an excellent strategy for obtaining championship level in Spanish.
